CHAPTER XIII
Morning came like a change in an interminable delirium. Light poured in through the open window, and the smothering heat of the night gave way to the burning heat of the day. Helen sat up on the tumbled bed, pressing her palms against her forehead, and tried to think.
The realization of her own position did not rouse any emotion. Her mind stated the situation baldly and she looked at it with impersonal detachment. It seemed a curious fact that she should be in a hotel in the oil fields, without money, with no way of getting food, with no means of leaving the place, owing bills that she could not pay.
"Odd I'm not more excited," she said, and in the same instant forgot about it.
The thought of Bert did not hurt her any more, either. She felt it as a blow on a spot numbed by an anesthetic. But slowly, out of the chaos in her brain, there emerged one thought. She must do something to help him.
She did not need to tell herself that he had not meant to break the law; she knew that. She understood that he had meant to cover the check, that he was in danger because of some accident or miscalculation. In the saner daylight the succession of events that had led to this monstrous catastrophe became clear to her. Bert's over-wrought self-confidence when he brought her the gold, his feverish insistence that this was a good territory for land sales, his excitement when he rushed away, believing that he could sell a farm to that shifty-eyed woman with the hat-box, should have told her the situation.
Just because Bert had made that tiny mistake in judgment—A frenzy of protest rose in Helen, beating itself against the inexorable fact. It could not be true! It could not be true that so small an incident had brought such calamity. It was a nightmare. She would not believe it.
"O Bert! It isn't true! It isn't—it isn't—O Bert!" She stopped that in harsh self-contempt. It was true "Get up and face it, you coward, you coward!"
She made herself rise, bathed her face and shoulders with cool water. The mirror showed her dull eyes and a mass of frowsy hair stuck through with hairpins. She took out the pins and began tugging at the snarls with a comb. Everything had become unreal; the solid walls about her, the voices coming up from the street below, impalpable things; she herself was least real of all, a shadow moving among shadows. But she must go on; she must do something.
Money. Bert needed money. It was the only thing that stood between him and unthinkable horrors of suffering and disgrace. His father would not help him. Her people could not. Somehow she must get money, a great deal of money.
She did not think out the idea; it was suddenly there in her mind. It was a chance, the only one. She stood at the window, looking out over the low roofs of Coalinga to the sand hills covered with derricks. There was money there. "Millions of dollars a year." She would take Bert's vacant place, sell the farm he had failed to sell, save him.
Her normal self was as lifeless as if it were in a trance, but beneath its dull weight a small clear brain worked as steadily as the ticking of a clock. It knew Ripley Farmland Acres; it recalled scraps of talk with the salesmen; it reminded her of photographs and blank forms and price lists. She dressed quickly, twisting her hair into a tidy knot, dashing talcum powder on her perspiring face and neck. From Bert's suitcase she hurriedly gathered a bunch of Ripley Farmland Acres literature and tucked it into a salesman's leather wallet. At the door she turned back to get a pencil.
The hotel was an empty place to her. If the idlers looked at her curiously over their waving fans when she went through the lobby she did not know it. It was like opening the door of an oven to meet the white glare of the street, but she walked briskly into it. She knew where to find the livery-stable, and to the man who lounged from its hay-scented dimness to meet her she said crisply:
"I want a horse and buggy right away, please."
She waited on the worn boards of the driveway while he brought out a horse and backed it between the shafts. He remarked that it was a hot day; he inquired casually if she was going far. To the oil fields, she said. East or west? "East," she replied at a venture. "Oh, the Limited?" Yes, the Limited, she agreed. When she had climbed into the buggy and picked up the reins, it occurred to her to ask him what road to take.
When she had passed Whiskey Row the road ran straight before her, a black line of oiled sand drawn to a vanishing-point on the level desert. The horse trotted on with patient perseverance, the parched buggy rattled behind him, and she sat motionless with the reins in her hands. Around her the air quivered in great waves above the hot yellow sand; it rippled above the black road like the colorless vibrations on the lid of a stove. Far ahead she saw a small dot, which she supposed was the Limited. She would arouse herself when she reached it. Her brain was as motionless as her body, waiting.
Centuries went past her. She reached the dot, and found a watering-trough and an empty house. She unchecked the horse, who plunged his nose eagerly into the water. His sides were rimed with dried sweat, and with the drinking can she poured over him water, which almost instantly evaporated. She was sorry for him.
When she was in the buggy again and he was once more trotting patiently down the long road she found that she was looking at herself and him from some far distance, and finding it fantastic that one little animal should be sitting upright in a contrivance of wood and leather, while another little animal drew it industriously across a minute portion of the earth's surface. Her mind became motionless again, as though suspended in the quivering intensity of heat.
Hours later she saw that the road was winding over hills of sand. A few derricks were scattered upon them. She stopped at another watering-trough, and in the house beside it a faded woman, keeping the screen door hooked between them, told her that the Limited was four miles farther on. It did not occur to her to ask anything more. Her mind was set, like an alarm clock, for the Limited.
She drove into it at last. It was like a small part of a city, hacked off and set freakishly in a hollow of the sand hills. A dozen huge factory buildings faced a row of two-story bunkhouses. Loaded wagons clattered down the street between them, and electric power wires crisscrossed overhead. On the hillside was a group of small cottages, their porches curtained with wilting vines. When she had tied the horse in the shade she stood for a moment, feeling all her courage and strength gathering within her. Then she went up the hill.
The screen doors of the cottages opened to her. She heard herself talking pleasantly, knew that she was smiling, and saw answering smiles. Tired women with lines in their sallow faces tipped the earthern ollas to give her a cool drink, pushed forward chairs for her. Brown-skinned children came shyly to her and touched her dress with sticky little fingers, laughing when she patted their cheeks and asked their names. Mothers showed her white little babies gasping in the heat, and she smiled over them, saying how pretty they were. Beneath it all she felt trapped and desperate.
It seemed to her that these women should have started at the sight of her as at a death's-head. There was nothing but friendly interest in their eyes, and their obliviousness gave her the comfort that darkness gives to a tortured animal. The hours were going by, relentlessly taking her one hope.
"Do you own any California land?"
"Yes." There would be a flicker of pride in tired eyes. "My husband just bought forty acres last week, near Merced. We're going to pay for it out of his wages, and have it to go to some day!"
"Isn't that fine! Oh yes, the land near Merced is very good land. Your husband's probably done very well. Do you know any one else who's looking for a ranch?" No one did.
She kept on doggedly. When she left each cottage desperation clutched at her throat, and for an instant her breath stopped. But she was so hopeless that she could do nothing but clench her teeth and go on. At the next door she smiled again and her voice was pleasant. "Good afternoon! Might I ask you for a drink of water? Oh, thank you! Yes, isn't it hot? I'm selling farm land. Do you own a California ranch?"
It was when she approached the sixteenth cottage that the steps, the wilted vine, the little porch went out in blackness before her eyes. But she escaped the catastrophe, and almost at once saw them clearly again and felt the gate-post under her tight fingers. The taste in her mouth was blood. She had bitten her lips quite badly, but wiping her mouth with her handkerchief she found that it did not show. She was past caring for anything but finding some one who would buy land. All her powers of thinking had narrowed to that and were concentrated upon it like a strong light on a tiny spot.
In the twentieth cottage a woman said that she had heard that Mr. MacAdams, who worked in the boiler factory, had been to Fresno to buy land and had not bought it. Helen thanked her, and went to the boiler factory.
It was a large building, set high above the ground. Circling it, she saw a man in overalls and undershirt lounging in a wide doorway above her. The roar and bang and whir of machinery behind him drowned her voice, and he stared at her as at an apparition. When he leaped down beside her and understood her demand to see Mr. MacAdams his expression of perplexity changed to a broad grin. MacAdams was in a boiler, he said, and still grinning, he climbed back to the door-step and drew her up by one arm into a huge room shaking with noise. He led her through crashing confusion and with his pipe-stem pointed out MacAdams.
MacAdams was crouching in a big cylinder of steel. In his hand he held a jerking riveter, and the boiler vibrated with its racket. His ears were stuffed with cotton, his eyes intent on his work. In mute show Helen thanked the man beside her and, going down on her hands and knees, crawled into the boiler. When she touched MacAdams's shoulder the riveter stopped.
"I beg your pardon," she said. "I heard you were interested in buying a ranch."
MacAdams's astonishment was profound. Mechanically he put a cold pipe in his mouth and took it out again. She saw that his mind was passive under the shock. Sitting back on her heels she opened the wallet and took out the pictures. Her voice sounded thin in her ears.
"There's lots of good land in California. I wouldn't try to tell you, Mr. MacAdams, that ours is the only land a man can make money by buying. But what do you think of that alfalfa?"
She knew that it was alfalfa because the picture was so marked on the back. While he looked at it she studied him, and her life was blank except for his square Scotch face, the deliberate mind behind it, and her intensity of purpose.
She saw that she must not talk too much. His mind worked slowly, standing firmly at each point it reached. He must think he was making his own decisions. She must guide them by questions, not statements. He would be obstinate before definite statements. He was interested. He handed back the picture and asked a question. She answered it from the information in the advertising, and while she let him reach for another picture she thought quickly that she must not let him catch her in a lie. If he asked a question, the answer to which she did not know, she must say so. She was ready when it came.
"I don't know about that," she answered. "We can find out on the land if you want to go and look at it."
He was noncommittal. She let the point go. She felt that her life itself hung on his decisions, and she could do nothing to hasten them. Her hands were shaking, and she forced her body to relax. She unfolded a map of Ripley Farmland Acres and pointed out the proposed railroad, the highway, the irrigation canals. She made him ask why part of the map was painted red, and then told him that those farms were sold. He was impressed. She folded the map a second too soon, leaving his interest unsatisfied.
He said he thought the proposition was worth looking into. She did not reply because she feared her voice would not be steady. In the pause he added that he would go over and look at it next Tuesday. She unfolded the map again. Her fingers were cold and stiff paper rattled between them, but the moment had come to test her success, and she would not deceive herself with false hopes.
She told him that she wanted to reserve a certain farm for him to see. She pointed it out at random. It was a very good piece, she said, the best piece unsold. She feared it would be sold before Tuesday. It could not be held unless he would pay a deposit on it. If he did not buy it the deposit would be returned.
"You don't want to waste your time, Mr. MacAdams, and neither do I." She felt the foundations of her self-control shaking, but she went on, looking at him squarely. "If this piece suits you, you will buy it, won't you?"
He would. If it suited him.
"Then please let me hold it until I can show it to you."
She waited while time ticked by slowly. Then he leaned sidewise, putting his hand in his pocket. "How much will I have to put up?"
When she backed out of the boiler five minutes later she had a twenty-dollar gold piece in her hand, and in her wallet was the yellow slip of paper with his signature on the dotted line. She stumbled down a lane between whirring machinery and dropped over a door-sill into the hot dust of the road. Her grip on herself was being shaken loose by unconquerable forces. She ran blindly to the buggy, and when she had somehow got into it she heard herself laughing through sobs in her throat. The horse trotted gladly toward Coalinga.
During the long drive across the desert she sat relaxed, too weary to be troubled or pleased by anything. The sun sank slowly beyond cool blue hills, and darkness crept down from them across the level miles of sand. A crescent of twinkling lights appeared on the lower slopes, where the western oil fields lay. Their lower rim was Coalinga, and she thought of bed and sleep. Clutching the gold piece, she reminded herself that she must eat. She must keep up her strength until she had sold that piece of land. She was too tired to face that effort now. The horse took her quickly past Whiskey Row and dashed to the livery-stable. She climbed down stiffly.
"Charge it." Her voice was stiff, too. "Clark & Hayward, San Francisco. I'm representing them. H. D. Kennedy—I'm at the hotel."
Her body lagged as she drove it to the telegraph-office. She had written a telegram to Clark & Hayward before she realized that she dared not face any inquiry until after Tuesday. It occurred to her then that she had committed a crime. She was not certain what it was, but she thought it was obtaining money under false pretenses. She destroyed the telegram.
Later, when she laid the twenty-dollar gold piece on the check for her supper, it seemed to her that she was embezzling. A discrepancy vaguely irritated her. Could one obtain money under false pretenses and then embezzle it, too? She was too tired to be deeply concerned, but as an abstract question it annoyed her. The waitress looked at her sharply, and she wondered if she had said something about it. In a haze she got up the stairs and into bed.